City Council Meeting   8/1/2011

and Michael

Thank you.

Music

Dr. Brown.

Ms. Edwards.

Here.

Mr. Norris.

Here.

Mr. Huja.

Yes.

Ms. Szakos.

Obviously, Dr. Brown is not able to be with us tonight, but we look forward to having him at our next meeting.

We have a couple of recognitions tonight.

The first has to do with Women's Equality Day.

Actually, both of our recognitions tonight have to do with the power of women.

Whereas this year is the 91st anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, giving women the right to vote in 1920.

Whereas in 1848, 163 years ago, in Seneca Falls, New York, the need was recognized and proclaimed.

But after great effort, there is still no reliable protection in the United States Constitution for women against sex discrimination in general.

and whereas in the past years laws and policies in the Commonwealth of Virginia have unjustly discriminated against girls and women in general or against particular classes of women such as a matter of reproductive rights, sexual assault, marital property and sexual harassment and although some laws and policies have been somewhat eased, such improvements can be, have been and are being reversed.

and whereas some institutional policies whether overtly discriminatory or facially neutral in public, voluntary and private institutions still have inequitable effects on women.

Policies such as those dealing with insurance, pension, family and medical leave from employment, job promotions, occupational choice, recreational opportunities and access to medical care including reproductive and abortion services and stereotypes still exist which limit women's roles and activities.

and whereas young girls and adult women must still contend with unwanted touching, sexual, physical and verbal assault and rape and being viewed by men as objects to use thus illustrating that many stereotypes are still operating which reinforce unjust assumptions and whereas most of the care of the young, the disabled and the elderly is still provided primarily by women many of whom through economic necessity must also work in the job market and or at home

and whereas in many other ways the task of providing equal opportunities to women and men and the task of removing burdens which fall unjustly on women as compared with men remain uncompleted.

Now therefore be it resolved that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia does hereby proclaim August 26, 2011 as Women's Equality Day in remembrance of all those women and men who have worked to develop a more equitable community which acknowledges both the real similarities and the important differences between women and men with liberty and justice for all.

and be it further resolved that the City Council urges all citizens on August 26 and thereafter, one, to treat all distinctions and classifications according to gender as initially suspect and to be questioned until they are justified by an equitable and compelling interest of the community, the institution or the individual affected,

and two, to require that the burden of justification for any distinction according to gender be borne by those who wish to discriminate against women as compared with men and three, to examine all facially neutral criteria such as physical stature requirements, occupational qualifications, child care assistance opportunities, home maintenance responsibilities, elder care benefits and disability benefits to determine whether they have disparate impact on women,

and four, to promote affirmative action in the public, voluntary and private sectors to overcome the effects of past discrimination and stereotyping which have limited the life chances of women and girls as compared with men and boys and five, to eliminate all unjust discrimination and prejudice against women and ensure equality of rights, privileges and responsibilities under equitable principles and practices for all women and men.

and here to receive this Women's Equality Proclamation, I believe it's Kabi here?

Oh, yes.

Kabi Hoffman and we also, sorry.

It's been 91 years since women got the vote and we've come a long way but we still have a ways to go and I really appreciate the fact that City Council is willing to go on the record and state that you care about discrimination and you care about looking at distinctions of any kind particularly in this case for women

and men or girls and boys and looking at that distinction and putting the weight of the burden to justify that on the person who's making that decision.

And if it's good for that individual and it's good for our community, then to allow it.

And if not, then to stand against it.

And I just want to give you our appreciation.

We now want to acknowledge and recognize our city's official roller derby team.

The Charlottesville Derby Dames and we have a few of the Derby Dames here tonight.

We wanted to make sure everybody knew that Virginia is for Shovers.

This Saturday, August 6, 2011, there's five different teams across Virginia who are competing for the title of the best in state here at the Main Street Arena on the downtown mall.

It's an all-day event from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., family-friendly.

This is a wonderful experience, and if you haven't had a chance to see our official roller derby team in action,

I hope you do take advantage of this opportunity.

Sure.

I'm Becky Birnbaum and I've been a member of the Charlottesville Derby Dames for about a year and a half.

and I just want to thank the city council for supporting us and all of the downtown merchants who are helping us put on a big event this Saturday.

We've got some cooperative things going on and the Virginia Wildlife Foundation who we're donating a portion of the proceeds to will also be there and have some animals for everybody to take a look at.

So on behalf of the Derby Dames, I just want to thank you for

Great, thank you.

We have a few announcements.

Just as a reminder, we'll not have a second City Council meeting in August, so the next meeting will be Tuesday, September 6th.

Also, City Hall will be closed on Monday, September 5th.

There will be normal trash and recycling service that day, but no CAT service, no bus service on Friday or Saturday of that first week in September.

Actually, I have a small pile of announcements.

The first is announcing the Charlottesville Citizens Police Academy beginning August 25th for 10 consecutive Thursdays from 6 to 8.30 p.m.

It's a chance for citizens to learn more about what the police department does.

They're going to have a unit on the dogs, the canine unit.

one on gangs and forensic and juvenile matters, General Investigations Bureau, anybody who wanted to know more about the police department and wants to get involved, this is the place to do it.

It's free.

The meetings will be at City Space.

And if you would like to register, you call Sergeant TV, is it McCain?

McKeen, sorry, at the Neighborhood Services Bureau at 566-1436.

and then we also have a couple of our town council meetings in your neighborhood coming up.

They're still a little ways off, but because we don't have a second meeting in August, I'll announce them now.

One is, let's see which one, Thursday, September 8th will be for, oh gosh, where, obviously I didn't, here I have another sheet that has it a little better.

September 8th is for the downtown Martha Jefferson neighborhood.

It will be at City Space at 105th Street above the parking garage or above the first part of the parking garage from 6 until 8 p.m. That's Thursday, September 8th.

And all of council, or at least usually all of council at most if that's necessary, will be there and it's entirely public comment with no three-minute limit.

Dinner will be served, childcare will be provided.

It's a time for the public to speak and for us to sit and listen.

We also will have all of the, or a lot of the department chairs will be their department heads so that often specific issues can be solved on the spot and that the people who need to hear about the problems will hear about them or need to hear about your great ideas.

If there's something new, we'll hear about them.

The next one after that, there's going to be one on Thursday, September 2nd at Burley School and that will be for the Rose Hill neighborhood, Rose Hill and Kelly Town neighborhood.

Thank you Ms. Szakos.

Yes.

And we also wanted to announce that our popular Movies in the Park series, we have the next one coming up August 12th at sundown, the movie Up will be playing at Meade Park.

Before we move on to matters by the public, I did want to take a moment to note that we lost a very special member of our community over the weekend.

Ms.

Dawn Reddick is a third grade teacher at Clark Elementary who's lost to violence in Newark, New Jersey.

And it's always sad when we lose a member of our community to violence, but particularly when we lose a teacher.

It's quite tragic and I'd like to, and Dawn was a young woman with wonderful potential and had just recently been acknowledged and recognized for her teaching abilities as a winner of the Golden Apple.

So I'd like to take a moment and have a moment of silence in her honor.

Thank you.

We are now going to move on to matters by the public.

And as is our custom, when you come forward, please state your name and address.

And we ask you to keep your comments to three minutes or less.

and Tatiana Patton, U of I 2209, JPA.

It's been a while since the last time I was standing in front of you.

I was moved by Ms. Edwards' comments on behalf of Mr. Huja at the last council meeting and inspired by the vote of confidence taken in him at the last meeting to ask you for another vote of confidence.

Tonight you'll hear again from the environmental organizations that support the water supply plan that you passed in earlier 2011.

I'm president of one of those groups, the Rivanna Conservation Society.

But I don't want to speak about the water supply plan.

I want to speak about another public attack on the environmental organizations that support the plan.

of the Nature Conservancy, SELC, RCS, Piedmont Environmental Council, the League of Women Voters have come forward time and time again to help the city council, the county of Albemarle, board of supervisors, the staffs of both, and even in Green and Fluvanna to navigate complex and layered environmental issues.

We have served on your commissions.

You've used us as a brain trust time and time again.

and the article that was written in The Hook has fired a broad shot across the bow of the environmental community.

We have been your brain trust and we hope that you trust that the information that we give you which is based on environmental science and data and not influenced by costs and other things that you may have to consider when making a decision is true and rendered in good faith.

Thank you, Ms. Patton.

Good evening, Richard Stattman, 116 Old Linda Drive, Mr. Mayor, Councillors, Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion

or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or bridging the freedom of speech or of the press or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for redress of grievances.

Our nation's first amendment, 45 words, the date 1791, bearing loud and true today in the home of Thomas Jefferson.

A bedrock of our country, the Bill of Rights defines the relation between our government and the people.

To quote Julian Bond,

The First Amendment means everything to me.

Everything spoken in this chamber tonight, all words great and trivial, are protected by this amendment.

As important as the air we breathe.

As Robert Corn River noted First Amendment attorney says, the First Amendment is more than about speech.

It's more than about words.

It's about the freedom.

Our Constitution and Bill of Rights, including the First Amendment, let our judgments and opinions be formed, tested, and expressed.

As the US Supreme Court said in US versus Playboy Entertainment Group, they are for the individual to make, not for the government to decree, even with a mandate or approval of a majority.

Speech that offends, speech that is hurtful, but speech that is protected.

A recent Daily Progress editorial on May 22nd asked in part the public to pay attention to fight back to complain about any free speech restrictions.

The editorial closed by noting how painful it is to see freedom slowly being nibbled away by public quote unquote servants and more distressing when the public doesn't notice or care.

Free speech cannot have a restraint based on the content of what is said.

In other words, no to restricting any language based on its content.

No to viewpoint discrimination in matters of free speech.

In this limited public meeting place, only the steps necessary to preserve order, procedures, and decorum of the meeting apply.

The legal cases surrounding free speech in this limited public meeting are very well known.

They include White versus City of Norwalk, Luckett versus City of Grand Prairie, Texas.

How many times a citizen may use the public comment section to speak to an issue, whether an individual can address pending litigation Charlottesville is involved in, whether one can criticize a member of council or any individual.

All this is protected by the First Amendment or falls perilously close to a prior restraint and raises the specter of censorship.

The public comment section of this regularly scheduled body is a time where free speech rights should deserve heightened protection.

All citizens enjoy this protection.

Responses by counselors to speech that is protected in this limited public meeting should never hint at a climate of restraining free speech or characterize public comments in a way that silences First Amendment protections.

A link to the last City Council meeting podcast has been sent to one of our nation's leading trial attorneys whose specialty is First Amendment cases.

Counselor responses to Mr. Lloyd, to Ms. Napoleon, to anyone catch the attention of people like Chip Mellor at the Institute for Justice.

Before the dam, before dredging, before the bypass, before the Meadow Creek Parkway, before the pump station, before steep slopes, there is free speech.

The greatest threat to free speech?

The government, whose representatives often seek to impose or control or guide the general discourse for what they believe is the public good.

Nat Hentoff famously said, this is free speech for thee and not for me.

Thank you Mr. Stammer.

Two weeks ago, I spoke before this body during the matters before the public.

As an interested citizen and a taxpayer, I expressed concern in that others and I are unable to fully understand the dialogue of Mr. Huja during the council meetings.

I did not make any personal attacks or any type of reference to accent, etc.

It is the given right of all citizens of Charlottesville to understand, to know what is discussed within this room and in its entirety.

I'm here tonight to declare that my comment as well as Mr. Lloyd's remarks were then inaccurately, improperly and unjustifiably attacked by Ms. Szakos.

This is a mature forum where an issue should not be swept under the rug as a citizen asks your board to make improvements or amends.

There are some of us who will not excuse such an abuse of power in the role of leadership.

Two weeks ago, Szakos expressed displeasure or embarrassment for Mr. Lloyd's and my comment.

She then falsely labeled my statement as xenophobic.

Have you read the definition of xenophobia as a condition encompassing fear and hatred of foreigners?

I have traveled widely.

I have taught children of other cultures.

Any intelligent person who accesses the podcast of July 18th can hear for themselves that the accusation and labeling of my statement in this matter is entirely blind.

It is a false indictment.

Ironically, the response echoing obvious rage before the visiting delegation of Afghani women exemplified a squelching of free speech by a representative of this board.

For that one should hang ahead and shame Ms. Szakos demonstrated unto this delegation of women who yearn for liberty a very poor introduction in allowing free speech.

I must also express concern

that this council must step up to the plate in protecting our water resources and our park land.

Burying our heads in the sand over the water situation or Merritt McIntyre Park is unwise.

Former decisions have been made on shaky ground.

It is imperative as one votes in the primary and upcoming election to look to the candidates

who will advocate for the citizens of Charlottesville.

Look to the candidates who will truly protect our resources.

Don't remain home.

As you are a registered voter, exercise your right to vote.

Good evening.

Coming before the city council is becoming a bit like what I've read about coming before the McCarthy Commission.

Individuals who speak of problems are branded xenophobia, but no xenophobia existed, just branded.

It's one way to shut her up, just make her self-conscious.

I was branded as disagreeable, that might be true.

for addressing the statements of others and attributing those statements to the author of the statement.

My report on what I was told by AECOM was simply a report.

That's what they told me.

Yet I was told that I was calling them a liar.

That's patently false.

It's slanderous.

Don't smile.

What about free speech and what about McCarthyism?

Think about it.

I mean, this is what we're about.

This is the land of Thomas Jefferson.

Okay, back to the water.

The supply and demand taught in high school, taught in college, taught in graduate school is price elasticity.

When you raise the price, you kill the demand.

The demand goes down when the price goes up.

I asked AECOM about that and they said they hadn't considered it.

This is fundamental.

ACSA Commission used the supply, the demand of elasticity to come up with their conservation pricing.

Every time you go up 3,000 gallons, they double the price.

It's a pretty steep demand, submission on demand.

I asked ACON if they had the report from ACSA and they said they weren't aware that it was even in existence.

It wasn't in their background information.

Just Google it.

It's a hot topic across the country.

Conservation pricing is coast to coast, north to south, and if you Google it, you're going to find some very high level responses.

You'll find a lot of companies like what they use, what the Albemarle County Service Authority used.

They hired someone from Annapolis, and I forget the name of that company and I keep looking for it.

There's no surprise that Charlottesville

has one of the lowest demands per capita around because we are the second highest cost of water in the state of the cities.

We're second highest.

You would expect us to have a low demand.

In 2002, we saw a dramatic drop in our demand.

And it didn't rebound.

And a lot of that was conservation.

But a lot of that also was because they doubled the price of water at that period of time.

They suppressed the demand.

Looking forward, it's important because ACSA is a large user of water and they have instituted this demand elasticity model.

They're doubling the price every 3,000 gallons.

What is that going to do to demand?

ACON did not consider it.

They didn't even have the report to consider it.

So when they go forward with their second

rendition of their report, I hope that their demand, my pleas for them to consider price elasticity are included.

Oh, and the four environmental groups, they say that if we dredge today, we don't have enough water for today.

Even if we dredge, we don't have enough water for today.

That's a real powerful statement.

You've got to sound the alarm.

This city's in peril.

Next summer could be worse than 2002.

No alarm.

Okay, thank you very much.

Thank you Mr. Lloyd.

Hi, my name is Liz Palmer, Albemarle County.

This is Martha Levering from the city and Linda Goodling from the county.

We're representing the League of Women Voters Natural Resource Committee here and we've just turned out two statements, one from the Rivanna Conservation Society and one from us.

The League of Women Voters, Rivanna Conservation Society, TNC, PEC and SELC support the water plan

approved earlier this year by City Council because it provides more water for people, more water for rivers, and is less expensive to rate payers.

The dredge-only option supported by some opponents of the plan is more expensive and does not provide enough water.

We often hear arguments that you have to choose between the environment and the economy.

The City-County approved plan shows that you can save nature while saving money.

The City County approved plan will raise the pool at Ragged Mountain Reservoir by 30 feet and store an additional 1.1 billion gallons of water.

It will also eliminate the unsafe conditions at the old Ragged Mountain Dam, solving two major problems with one project.

Much has been made about new information on dredging contained in the HDR study completed last summer.

Some have claimed that the HDR study shows that dredging costs less than we originally believed and insists that the adopted plan should be abandoned.

This claim is false.

The 2004 Gannett Fleming study estimated the price to remove all the sediment that is in the reservoir now, plus all the sediment that will accumulate in the reservoir for the next 50 years.

HDR gave an estimate for one time dredge to remove only the sediment that has already accumulated.

The total cost of a dredging project depends on how much sediment you remove.

In order to compare the cost estimates provided by the two studies, you need to look at the cost per cubic yard for removal.

From the chart in the handout we've given you, you can see those unit costs are the same.

The more detailed HDR study breaks the dredging into two parts.

There's the dredging that removes material we can sell called Part 1 dredging, and there is the dredging that removes material that we have to dispose of called Part 2 dredging.

The HDR study also said that dredging Part 1 and 2 one time will create 151 million gallons of storage.

With the dredging only option, we get the same storage we had in 1966 and we have to pay to fix the old Ragged Mountain Dam.

The city county approved project includes dredging only where we can offset the cost by selling the sand and dirt.

The dredging only option includes the dredge cell project and the more expensive dredge store project as well as fixing the Ragged Mountain Dam.

So new information on the cost of the dam and the cost of dredging shows that repairs would pay $26 million for the city county adopted plan and about $36 million for the dredge only option.

That's $10 million more for one-eighth the amount of water under the dredge only plan.

Good evening, I'm John Cruikshank.

I live at 324 Parkway Street and last year my family renovated part of our home.

This turned out to be a lot of work considering the modest size of this construction project.

We carefully selected a contractor and had numerous meetings with the designer.

My wife and I spent hours discussing the many options.

We solicited input from our friends and family,

We were eager to complete the work on our house, but no one, not the designer, contractor, or either of us ever considered beginning construction until we all agreed on the completed plan and had a written cost estimate.

This just seemed like common sense.

But when it comes to McIntire Park,

The Virginia Department of Transportation seems to think this type of planning is unnecessary.

Rather than face a preliminary injunction on the McIntire Road extended, they asked the Army Corps of Engineers to terminate their clean water permit for the stream crossing.

They had recently decided to modify their design for the McIntire Road extended to eliminate all impacts to this stream.

To date, however, they have not released any information about the new design or the additional costs.

The VDOT spokesman stated last week that despite this new design for the road, they are ready to begin construction right away.

He said there are other construction activities that can go on while we are determining the method to cross this creek.

The people of Charlottesville have a right to know what is going to happen to McIntire Park before it happens.

This park belongs to the citizens, not the VDOT administrators.

There's a big difference between a box culvert and what we suspect will be a bridge.

The adverse effects on the park are very different in terms of traffic noise and view shed.

I am asking the Charlottesville City Council to prevent any road construction in McIntire Park from proceeding until there has been a full disclosure of the alternate plan for this stream crossing and a public hearing has been held on the new design.

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I'm here also to talk about the issue of construction in McIntire Park.

I have been inquiring of the Virginia Department of Transportation for the last week plus a few days without response about what the proposal would be to construct such a facility as you see behind you.

in McIntyre Park.

Interestingly, the permit, which would have allowed crossing of the creek, the stream that runs east-west, north is to the right on that map, so it would run up and down about, oh I guess it's three-quarters of the way to the north or a little further.

My understanding of the construction method proposed by VDOT for this project was to regrade this site using a significant amount of earth from the south side of this stream to fill in the very lowland area which is on the north side of the stream.

and there's embankments up to about 30 feet high that would be constructed to get the elevation of the road so that it could meet at Melbourne Road.

But without the box culvert in place, it's impossible to move earth from the south side of that stream to the north side of that stream.

I'm curious, I've heard rumor that there may well be a meeting between some of the city staff and VDOT about this project and some of the proposed ideas.

I would just like to encourage staff and counselors who might be involved to question VDOT about how they plan to move the significant amount of earth that is going to be moved in this project.

It appears the only practical way to do that would be to load earth from the cuts that will be made on the south side onto trucks, take them out into 250 Bypass, perhaps take Park Street around to Melbourne Road to be able to get to the area where the deposition of this material is required.

If we think about the truck issue that's been discussed in the water dam construction concerns about trucks on River Road or Riverside, River Road I guess it is.

Reservoir, that's right, Reservoir Road.

I think that the impact of having many trucks on Park Street during a relatively long period of construction is going to be of much greater significance than anything imagined and opposed on Reservoir Road.

So I hope that you do have a meeting with VDOT, that you do make some of the materials public and perhaps allow individuals to come and actually listen to what is being proposed.

Mayor Norris and members of the City Council.

My name is Paul Long.

I live at 1410 Grady Avenue.

The City of Charlottesville continues to have countless residents who are homeless who have fallen through the cracks of our social service network and who will be sleeping on park benches, under bridges, on the banks of the Rivanna River this evening.

And this is unconscionable.

No one should be forced to be homeless in the United States.

I again call upon this City Council to appropriate $2 million of the previous budget surplus to non-profit organizations and churches to establish year-round permanent shelters for the homeless.

I also want to object to the announcement that on the Labor Day weekend, the Charlottesville Transit Service will not be operating.

This is the only urban area and city that, to my knowledge, that allows this public transit service not to operate on legal holidays.

And there are many residents of Charlottesville who don't have quarries who work and may want to come down to the downtown mall to see movies and shop and who will not be able to do so because of that.

and I also think that if the city is deliberate in its efforts to try to attract people to use public transit service, it should be operating seven days a week, Sundays and legal holidays as well.

Thank you, Mr. Long.

I think I just got a new phone.

Somebody?

Okay.

Not mine.

Rebecca Quinn, 104 4th Street here in the city and I'm here of course to talk about water plan.

Questions about numbers abound and numbers that have been published and repeated in the last two weeks I think seem designed to add to the confusion.

Any sense of credibility is strained by claims that dredging will somehow reduce the total volume of water in our system.

Every time we pull back the curtain, or even just read the footnotes, we learn a lot.

Today, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority, made available to citizens for a sustainable water plan, its instructions and email discussions with Hydrologics, the company that runs the safe yield model.

We haven't finished our review, but, especially if you read the footnotes, it doesn't take much to see we've been offered a false comparison.

Here's what we know.

The HDR study demonstrates the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir has more water and silting is much slower than was assumed when the dam and pipeline plan was hatched.

This additional storage capacity is ignored by Rivanna.

The entire water system has more capacity than Rivanna is counting, especially Fever Creek is included.

It has more water than Crozet is projected to use even in 50 years.

And three, Rivanna's numbers purporting to compare dredging and dam scenarios are misleading because they assume the permitted stream flows for the dam and pipeline plan would be required for a dredge first plan.

This is, in my opinion, perhaps the most egregious and artificial constraint in the whole analysis.

Dredging is an entirely different project with entirely different stream and wetlands impacts, and I think it's outrageous we are asked to accept Rivanna's imposition of the same stream flows.

We the public and you the council should not accept this false comparison.

You should demand a complete, fair, and transparent assessment of today's system capacity,

as well as the capacity we get with dredging.

We do not have that now.

Given what we know about our water use today, which has fallen more than 20% in 10 years, and projected water use, especially when realistic population numbers are used, we remain convinced that much more could be done to address stream flow objectives today.

All they have to do is increase the size of the pipe, releasing water from Sugar Hollow, and they could do a lot more.

and it can be done without making us go into debt to pay for more than $140 million in capital improvements we may not need for many decades to come.

Dredging provides additional water every time it rains and without a pipeline, without pumping water uphill.

And that increased capacity along with better management of Sugar Hollow means we would have more water for people and more water for our rivers and it would cost much less.

I appreciate people who want complicated things simplified.

You know, I like getting into the numbers.

I'm one of those people.

But I understand the desire for simplicity.

But sometimes that contributes to the false comparisons.

With more time, I would be glad to dispel what I think is another simple, yet very misleading comparison.

And that is the gallon for gallon comparison that we have heard

not only from a member of council but from other dam supporters over and over.

Good evening, Stratton Salita, 704 Grave Street.

Just add a few things to what Ms. Quinn just said.

The recent cost estimate comparisons between the big dam plan and dredging have not included the pipeline that would be necessary to make the big dam plan work.

at an estimated, I think it was $60 million.

That's more expensive than the dam itself by a considerable margin and I'd like to know who they think they're fooling.

So I'll just add that along with the idea

or pardon me, the statement that the demand analysis again has been proven dramatically wrong.

We know that instead of going way up, it's actually gone down, something like

20% over the last 10 years, our water usage.

So we don't need as much water as has been said, and dredging is less expensive if you don't cook the numbers.

but what I'm mostly here to talk about is this latest VDOT action where after spending over two years trying to get a permit from the Corps of Engineers the day before they were going to have that permit tested in court VDOT decided that they didn't want the permit anymore

and I hope you all are very curious about why that is, why they would try so hard and then just give it up.

So let me give you just a little bit of history.

A few years ago VDOT first applied for this permit from the Corps of Engineers but they showed the Corps of Engineers a road that ended in the middle of McIntire Park.

Now you might say, well, why was that?

Well, because the interchange is supposed to meet McIntyre Road in the middle of the park.

But VDOT didn't want to show that the federally funded interchange was the logical endpoint of the road, so instead they just pretended like the road ended in the middle of the park.

The reason they didn't want their terminus to be the federally funded interchange is because the rules are written that if you need federal money to finish your state project, you're supposed to apply those environmental and historic protection laws to the whole state project.

They didn't want to do that.

So V dot showed this half road.

The Corps of Engineers said,

Hold on, we can't continue to process this until you show us a whole road that doesn't end in the middle of a field.

So then VDOT said, oh well, we'll just build our McIntyre Road extended, our Meadow Creek Parkway, right to 250 and make an at-grade connection with 250.

Well the problem with that is that council had decided that that was not a very good idea because if you were to build an accurate connection with 250 it would immediately double the traffic congestion on the 250 bypass.

Immediately you would have to sit there at that light for twice as long as you do now.

And the parkway itself would be an F. So council said no parkway without an interchange.

but VDOT was saying that they were going to do this at grade so Mayor Norris at a meeting brought this up with the city staff and said you better clear this up with VDOT and city staff person Angela Tucker said that she would get with VDOT and clear that up well six weeks later she wrote a letter city staff person to VDOT saying if the interchange isn't built

Then council will approve an at-grade connection with 250 which was patently untrue But perhaps it would have helped to get that permit.

Well the Corps sent that to some people who were consulting parties on this project and council sent

the correction to the Corps of Engineers and VDOT saying no, we did not agree to build an at-grade parkway.

I hope that you all will not allow VDOT to build a plan the city has not even looked at, yet alone agreed to and I hope that there will be at least a new public hearing and in December you will allow the interchange, the connection for this road, this half road to be tested to see if it is in fact legal.

Thank you Mr. Salidas.

Good evening, Brandon Collins, 536 Meade Avenue.

I've lived in Charlottesville all my life.

I have a daughter who's also lived here all her life.

I noticed on the consent agenda today you're appropriating money for transit and figured that was a good opportunity to bring up the issue with Jaunt, that they are facing some really high gas prices and their budget's gotten a little screwy because of that and they need the money.

and I hope you give it to them.

They need that supplemented.

Jaunt is an extremely needed service for people with disabilities and senior citizens.

It's not like me, when I can't get on the bus, you know, I'll wind up walking or hopefully riding a bike, something like that.

Folks who have disabilities really need that service and without the extra money Jaunt is looking at.

reducing service and reducing hours perhaps.

And we should always be looking to expand Jaunt for people with disabilities and senior citizens.

I also noticed the money being put aside for the reentry workforce program.

I was looking at the program.

It's a really great

Program.

I'm glad to see it getting going and I think this is a pretty good start.

I don't know that $30,000 is really enough to ensure that this program is going to get going.

You know, is it that with a little more money you could actually get a couple more people involved in that program?

You know, I know it's a pilot program, but I really hope council can give its full attention and full funds to make it really work because it, you know, it can really make a huge difference in the lives of a lot of people and not just our friends who are reentering society, but, you know, their families and their neighborhoods and our whole community.

So I hope you will consider maybe putting a little more money towards that.

The other thing is the McIntyre Road extended, you know, I first want to say, you know, I've heard a lot of stuff that if we weren't paying

So much attention to the dam and the parkway that, you know, council would maybe spend its time feeding the homeless and feeding the hungry and, you know, making sure we had a much better society.

And that's just, I saw it two weeks ago here and it's just been repeated, repeated, repeated.

You know, if that's the case, go ahead and vote tonight to feed everybody and house the homeless.

I mean, that would be awesome.

Can you do that?

I'd love that.

You know, in the meantime, it does seem like a no-brainer if they change the plan for the road.

Please have public input.

I think you heard plenty of questions tonight.

You could learn a lot from what the public has to say about this road, and we need that information.

And, you know, you're going to have to take another vote on it.

I mean, that's just how these things work.

Thank you, Mr. Collins.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, my name is Bill Kittrell, I'm with the Nature Conservancy.

First thing I have to do is say hello to my daughter Maggie who is either at the swimming pool or watching this and I'll be curious to find out when I get home, which she chose.

I'm here tonight on behalf of the five prominent environmental organizations.

League of Women Voters, Southern Environmental Law Center, Piedmont Environmental Council, Rivanna Conservation Society and the Nature Conservancy to endorse the approved city-county water supply plan because it provides enough water to meet the needs of people and nature and we oppose the dredging only option because it does not.

Meeting the needs of both people and nature is challenging but the approved city-county plan does exactly that.

We need enough water storage capacity so that we don't have to take as much water from the rivers during droughts.

With enough capacity in a reservoir, we use that water during droughts and refill it by skimming water from the rivers during the rainy season.

Without enough storage capacity, we're forced to choose between having enough water for people or for nature.

The approved city-county plan provides enough water so that we don't have to sacrifice our rivers.

So as environmentalists, we support a solution that does not force us to choose between water for us or water for nature.

We support a plan that is big enough for both.

Three weeks ago, DEQ sent an email to Rivanna saying that opponents of the plan should stop using the safe field numbers shown in the state's August 2010 letter because it did not contain accurate information.

The state said to compare the numbers in the state's letter with the plan's numbers is, quote, an inaccurate and inappropriate comparison.

DEQ also told Rivanna that it should work with its scientists to determine how much water the system will provide from dredging only while also protecting the rivers.

We received that information from Hydrologics, Rivanna's consultants, two weeks ago and it absolutely reaffirms our support of the approved plan.

I show the information graphically on my handout to you.

This table before you shows the minimum amount of water that we're going to need over the next 50 years based on AECOM's demand report.

I have placed arrows on it showing that dredging alone only provides 9.2 million gallons a day while also protecting the rivers and that's a key thing.

The new dam with 30 foot pool rise provides 12.5 million gallons a day and the dam and pipeline provides 15.3 while providing enough water for our streams.

Since we are currently using around nine

around 10 million gallons a day.

We think this is transformational information because it tells us that we can't even meet our community's current needs while protecting the rivers at the same time.

So we, as environmentalists, oppose the dredge only plan because it clearly requires us to sacrifice our rivers.

Finally, some opponents of the plan have said that we can simply rewrite the permit or take river protection out of the permit.

That approach

would continue the same destructive practices we have seen for decades with our rivers.

We find that unacceptable.

Thank you, Mr. Kittrell.

We are now going to, well, thank you to everybody who came to speak tonight.

We are now going to open the meeting to Councilmember responses to matters by the public.

Who would like to get us started?

Mr. Mayor, I'd like to speak.

Last time Ms. Napolin said some comments about me, asked her if she was understanding me, and I'm sorry that she's having such trouble.

I'm aware that I have an accent, and I've had that for a long while.

I think I'm going to have it for a few more years.

So, but I'm trying to do the best I can.

And I will, just for your information, back at my nameplate says,

I don't know if you can read it.

So, I'm trying to do that, and I continue to try to do that, and usually I manage, but sometimes I don't succeed.

In those times, I'll try to improve.

Anybody else?

I almost didn't wait in, but I will, I just wanted to

To note that last week, since I was called out for what I said last week, in my defense I will say that I said at that meeting that I would defend to the death everyone's right to say whatever they came here to say.

I just wanted to make a general statement about public comment because I do have just a very unique role.

I was watching one of our local pastors on TV and the message that he provided

reminded me of some of the experiences that I've had in council chambers and learning how to listen and to appreciate all the things, all the gifts that are brought to us.

And there were some gifts you want to keep, some you want to exchange, but they're all gifts.

But what he said that made me think about public comment was an analogy of the roadrunner.

and the coyote that was always chasing the roadrunner.

And he said that it was something that he had learned from his mentor.

And he said that when the cartoon was being devised that they decided there would be some rules.

And I'm kind of paraphrasing it now because I'm trying to remember how he told the story.

But the bottom line was the coyote could never hurt the roadrunner.

And the coyote could not catch him.

and even though the coyote was after him relentlessly, the roadrunner's response was always the same.

Even though he knew the coyote was after him to kill him and eat him, his response was the same two words, beep beep.

and it helped me to frame some of the gifts that you bring but the core of this message was whether we're here or in the audience or someplace else, wherever you are, the bottom line is make your haters your elevators.

Take that opportunity to learn and grow with whatever gift you bring.

So now you know for my last six months

during public comment period.

All right.

Mr. Ritter.

Mr. Ritter, I also want to acknowledge that the number of groups in the community who help us from time to time

and in this case the five environmental groups have done that for us.

I appreciate their assistance.

I appreciate the assistance of other groups also.

This is what I think makes our system good.

Thank you.

Well said.

I have a few comments to make, specific comments to make.

First of all, before I address tonight's remarks, I do want to publicly apologize again to Brandon Collins, whom I corrected a couple meetings ago on some information he brought to Council.

And it turned out he was right and I was wrong, and I again want to publicly apologize to Mr. Collins.

You were correct on the transit funding.

Also, I fully agree with you that we should find ways to support Jaunt.

I don't know if you have any updates on that.

What we've done in response to the letter that was sent to us back in the early part of July was to say that we are certainly willing to consider their request, but we wanted, because it's the beginning of the fiscal year, we wanted to see how things would play out during the first quarter.

And at that point we would evaluate where they are, where the gas prices are,

and then come back to city council and have a discussion about providing additional funding.

We just thought it was so early in the fiscal year that maybe it would make a lot of sense for us to jump out, provide the new funding without really knowing how things are going.

Great.

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

Also, Mr. Collins, I agree on the reentry funding.

I see that as just a down payment.

If the program succeeds as well as I think all of us hope and expect it will succeed, I fully expect you'll see continued, if not expanded, city support.

And thank you for encouraging us in that direction.

I also wanted to have Mr. Jones respond to a couple of good questions that have been raised tonight by Mr. Kleeman and others about the status of the McIntyre Road Extended Project in light of the withdrawal of the permit request from the Corps of Engineers.

Sure, just briefly it was an email that we received from Jim Utterbach of VDOT and they are in the process of working on a design for a bridge over the stream.

They have said to city staff that they would provide a preliminary design before the end of this month.

We are setting up a meeting with city staff and representatives from VDOT in the next week or so to have a better understanding of the approach and time frame and that type of thing.

But they do believe that they can build a bridge that would be similar to the bridge that was already built with the Albemarle County portion of the parkway.

and that they would take into consideration both the staff considerations when it comes to the aesthetics of the bridge and also the public input as well.

I've asked that if we have a design and we were promised that by the end of this month that we would put that on the agenda for consideration during the first meeting in September.

That's exactly what they said.

And the intent along in terms of the construction of the parkway was to begin on the northern end believing that that wouldn't affect this portion of the parkway until later on a few months down the road.

So they felt that they had plenty of time to develop a design that would come back for public consumption.

I think the sense that I'm hearing from people tonight and from other emails we've received, people want to make sure that this is a public process and I gather from your statement that you're just as committed to that as you've always been.

Yes sir.

I also wanted, not to keep putting you on the spot Mr. Jones, but I also wanted to, if you could give us an update on an issue that Ms. Quinn and others have raised regarding

the water projections, water demand projections that sort of underlie this table here from AECOM which have the city of Charlottesville going up in population from about 43,000 today to about 70,000 in the next few decades and which obviously is, I think to a lot of us, a pretty shocking estimate.

Sure, our staff from Neighborhood Development Services met with representatives from AECOM, I think it was about a week ago, a week and a half ago, and explained to them some of the concerns that we had about those numbers and we wanted to know a little bit more about the methodology, especially in light of the fact that AECOM had expressed to folks that we had provided those numbers to them, which in fact we did not.

We talked about population growth over the last 10 years, we had some conversations with them, but we did not provide numbers to them.

Great, thank you.

And then the last thing I would say is I would like to get, and if you've provided this before I apologize, I don't remember seeing it, but some information from staff on what it would take to keep our transit system open on holidays as Mr. Long has suggested.

All right, thank you all and thank you again to everybody who spoke tonight.

We're now going to move on to the rest of our agenda.

The next item, we have council appointments to boards and commissions and tonight we have an announcement regarding an appointment to the City Planning Commission.

Mr. Mayor, the council has discussed and recommends Natasha Sintaski for, Sintaski, sorry.

As a planning commissioner, she's a young lady who has a planning background.

I'll second.

Second.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And it carries unanimously.

So congratulations to Natasha Sinitsky.

And also I want to publicly thank all of the candidates who applied.

We had a really strong applicant pool this time.

Very good pool.

Very good pool.

It was a very difficult decision.

And we encourage everybody applied to it.

That is an important point to make.

Thank you, Mr. Huja.

We'll now move on to our consent agenda.

Item A on the consent agenda tonight in the minutes of July 18th.

Item B is an appropriation of $5,000 Virginia Commission of the Arts Challenge Grant, second of two readings.

Item C, an appropriation of $2,774.80 Federal Bureau of Investigations Overtime Reimbursement for the Cyber Crimes Task Force, second of two readings.

Item D, an appropriation of $7,700 for the 9-11 Memorial Steel Project, Phase 1, second of two readings.

Item E is an appropriation of $1,011,823, appropriation of fiscal year 2012 transit grants, second of two readings.

Item F, an appropriation of $97,500, Virginia Department of Criminal Justice Services neighborhood of promise grant, first of two readings.

Item G, an appropriation of $65,000.

CASA Start, Truancy Prevention Program, first of two readings.

Item H, Appropriation, Workforce Development Program, carryover funding for fiscal year 2012, first of two readings.

Item I, an appropriation of $182,500, Charles Albemarle, Adult Drug Treatment Court Grant Award, first of two readings.

Item J, an appropriation of $65,000, Teens Give, Service Learning and Life Skills Program, first of two readings.

Item K, a Resolution Re-entry Employment Program, allocation of funds from Re-entry Workforce Development Account, $30,060, first of one reading.

and item L is resolution real estate assessment system upgrade $199,232 and GIS web viewer $50,000 first of one reading.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And the consent agenda is approved unanimously.

Thank you very much.

Next item on our agenda tonight is a public hearing and an ordinance relating the transfer of Elliott Lott to Habitat for Humanity.

It's before us tonight on the first of two readings.

Good evening.

First of last month, I was here discussing the remnant parcel of this lot, or portion of the lot on Elliott, but we're talking about the south side of Elliott Avenue at the corner of Ridge and Elliott.

This was referred to previously as lot number two.

Initially going back all the way to December,

This is officially the seventh time we've been and hopefully the last time with information and requests regarding subdividing this lot and transfer and sale and so forth.

But back in December, the council had decided to sell the lot to Southern Development, who owns and is in the process of undergoing, was undergoing looking at expanding Burnett Commons at that time.

Subsequent to that, it was decided that the lot would be more appropriately used based on neighborhood feedback for a landscaped area, possibly including signage and art in place if that was approved as well.

So tonight we're coming back to you in terms of the public hearing portion to consider

The transfer of lot number two to Habitat for Humanity who is now partnering with Southern Development in this Burnett Commons phase two in which they would have an affordable component of four lots going to Habitat for Humanity and other three affordable lots going to the city.

Keeping lot number two not as a for sale lot to Southern Development but as a transfer or gift lot

Any questions for Ms. McHugh before we open the public hearing?

Hearing none, thank you Ms. McHugh.

We do have a public hearing scheduled and Colette Hall is scheduled or signed up to speak.

Good evening, Councillors.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

Please correct me, but is this the same lot that former mayor Blake Caravaggio discussed two or three city council meetings ago?

That's an adjacent parcel.

That's not this lot.

Okay, thank you.

Okay, my next question is, so to just clarify what the staff woman just said, this lot is going to be given to Habitat for Humanity, but it's going to be deeded over to Southern Development.

In turn, they're going to build some affordable housing units.

Well, not on this lot.

What is going to happen to this lot?

Is it going to be a pocket park?

Because I don't understand what she's saying and I'm so confused about it because Mr. Caravaggio was talking about the fact that why wasn't this really open to bidding to all small businesses and that really concerns me because there are other builders in the area beside Habitat for Humanity

and Mr. Kiravati.

I'm not an employee of Mr. Kiravati, but he made some good points.

He did say it should be more transparent and open to more businesses.

I'm a small business supporter.

Thank you.

Let me just say that we did, in recognition of the comments that Mr. Caravaggio made, we did extend that process so that other bidders had a chance to prepare bids.

No further bids came forward, and we went ahead and voted on that particular lot.

I'll try.

I wish we had a map open.

Can I have a smaller one here?

You're welcome to look on it.

It was originally just one parcel and it was subdivided or surveyed and subdivided into three different parcels that we referred to as lot one, lot two, and residual.

And each of them had been acted on at different times and I agree it's probably confusing and one of the points I made was this is the seventh time we came with some, you know, with some matter regarding

with disposition of this particular parcel of land.

But at present, Lot 1, if we go all the way back to December, Lot 1, it was proposed to transfer that to Habitat for Humanity to place a spec house that was being developed by CATEC on that lot.

Subsequent to that, Habitat accepted the lot,

did some test drilling there and discovered that we have massive amounts of fill there.

And the cost to actually excavate it and make the lot buildable was estimated around $50,000.

So they determined it was too expensive to take and place that house there.

I'm not sure exactly where it went from there, but I believe that CATEC ended up putting that house, I believe in Greene County.

Habitat just basically acknowledged that the lot was going to be expensive to develop and it would take special circumstances in order to allow them to use that.

At the same time, because lot number two was adjacent to Burnett Commons, the council decided back in that December, January timeframe to offer that to sell to Southern Development.

They were agreeable to purchase it initially

However, after that, they began amassing some adjacent lots back behind that are adjacent to this property, but not owned by the city.

Either options to purchase or I'm not sure exactly of all the formalities of those transactions, but long story short is

they realized that they could amass with city property as much as five acres to do something really substantial there, expand Burnett Commons, add an affordable component and allow for some green space.

And so there was a discussion and they approached Habitat, talked with Habitat about possibly utilizing their lot, approaching the city about requesting the residual lot,

and as we kind of came full circle Habitat and Southern Development became, they entered into a memorandum of intent spelling out their specific ideas but really that they wanted to partner together to move forward and to not only expand Burnett Commons but to add this affordable component.

The lot number two

I mean, clearly Southern Development could have just purchased it, placed housing on it, but in meeting with the neighborhood and adjacent property owners, it was determined that they really just didn't want a house there and they felt like it would be more appropriately used as green space.

So, in trying to be responsive to those requests, they came back and said, you know, we could buy it, but we hate to buy something that we can't really utilize.

and so it was looked at possibly transferring it with this other property so it could become part of the homeowner's association and be up kept with the other common areas.

Okay, so what was up for sale then?

All right.

Thank you.

I realize it's complicated.

Absolutely.

I had followed all this and I kind of understood it.

Yes, thank you.

Anybody else in the public like to speak on this matter?

Okay, we will now close the public hearing on this matter.

We have before us an ordinance tonight on the first of two readings.

Alright, it's been moved and seconded and it will carry forward to our next meeting.

Thank you again, Ms. McHugh and Ms. Hall.

Next item is a public hearing in an ordinance relating to the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority easement for Sk- I never know how to pronounce it.

Is it Skanks Branch or Shanks Branch?

Does anybody know?

It is Skanks Branch.

Right.

I've heard it both ways over the years.

Thank you.

Mayor and Councillors, I probably will not pronounce it correctly at all because I haven't got that in my head yet.

Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority owns a sanitary sewer collection line known as the Shanks Branch Interceptor line.

which is approximately 7,000 linear feet.

It begins on the east side of the McIntyre Road across from the parking lot of the Albemarle County office building and it goes under the 250 bypass and ultimately connects to Rivanna's Meadow Creek sewer line which is downstream.

The current 21-inch sewer line needs to be replaced with a larger 30-inch sewer line to accommodate current capacity and additional flows during rain events.

In addition, this new sewer line will be deeper than the existing sewer line and this gives the city an opportunity

to eliminate city sewer line stream and creek crossings upstream.

These stream crossings can prove problematic to the city over time.

Currently, Rivanna has sewer overflows at various locations along the Shanks Branch sewer line.

Improvements to Rivanna's Shanks Branch sewer line are mandated by the Department of Environmental Quality in a consent order where a plan and schedule is

due to them at mid next year.

The line is being upgraded in segments with the lower downstream portion which is approximately 640 feet and what we refer to in the memo as segment one in order to keep the phasing clear as part of Rivanna's Meadow Creek interceptor project.

The next segment which is about 1150 feet is part of the Virginia's Department of Transportation's McIntire Road

extended project.

These easements for the first two segments have already been granted to Rivanna.

Segment three, which is approximately 850 feet, was designed independent of but in conjunction with the interchange project even though it is outside the interchange limits.

It was realized that the sewer line had to be connected by the city.

If they are not connected, Rivanna would have to pump this section of sewer or it would pose an interruption of service to city customers.

The sequencing of the work was reviewed and it makes more sense to include this section of the

this section of the sewer line with the McIntyre Road extended project and the process has begun where the contractor will include this section of sewer line in his work hopefully using the same unit prices which are very favorable.

Funding for Segment 3 is the responsibility of Rivanna.

Segment 4's easement is where the sewer line in association with the interchange project through Harris Street is located.

This segment is approximately 1940 linear feet.

VDOT and Federal Highway Administration will participate in the cost of the sewer line relocation associated with segment 4, which is a benefit to the city.

Segment 3 and 4 are highlighted on a map behind you and these are the segments that are under consideration for easement by council tonight.

The granting of the permanent easement to Rivanna has been advertised for a public hearing and will require the adoption of the attached draft ordinance.

I might note the final section, which is section 5, which is upstream of this current Shanks Branch project.

is being designed by the cities as part of the 14th, 15th Street replacement project.

It's about 2410 feet of Rivanna's line that will be included in the city's project which we're looking to upgrade and council will address that sometime in the future for easement consideration.

The last time that an easement was considered for Rivanna, landscaping was a concern.

Landscaping will be handled in the same manner as it was addressed in the past, where Rivanna is allowing to plant trees in the easement, and this language is outlined in the current proposed deed.

I do want to emphasize that if the roadway projects do not move forward,

Rivanna is prepared to take the plans that have been developed and bid the sewer work themselves.

Therefore, this easement will be required.

The replacement of the Shanks Branch Line is Rivanna's highest priority after they construct the current Meadow Creek project.

The replacement of the Shanks Branch Line must proceed in order to be in compliance with the consent order by Department of Environmental Quality, eliminate the sewer overflows that are happening now,

and provide adequate sewer capacity for city customers.

Just to reiterate, what you're saying, if I understand correctly, is that this line has to be upgraded and needs to be upgraded independently of whatever roadway project is moving forward.

That's exactly right.

It just so happens that the roadway projects are happening in the same vicinity right now

Alright, thank you.

Something that people may wonder if they can see this map is about the impact on the rescue squad.

I think the entrance to the rescue squad is going to be reworked as part of the interchange, but it's not a problem with the sewer line easement at all.

Any other questions for Ms. Hildebrandt before we open the public hearing?

Thank you, Ms. Hildebrandt.

We will now open the public hearing.

Colette Hall, 101 Robertson Lane.

I have multiple questions.

This is going to happen in the north downtown neighborhood.

I'm the former neighborhood president and I live right near here.

I can't read that map, so that big line that kind of goes from

What is that?

Last year, they tore up that whole bank

at Skanks Branch and that bank that's west of the creek is all grassy area and I emailed her and I emailed Crystal and I emailed everybody in the city I could and said you can't plant trees there now.

Now what did they do with that bank?

It was sewer work as part of our rehabilitation project.

That's upstream of this project.

That's off this map.

Alright.

So, since we're talking about the culvert and the bridge and all that that's going to happen north of all of this, we're talking about all of this that's going to happen south of all of this.

This culvert that is not going to happen now and this bridge that might happen now would be north of all of this new easement that we're talking about.

and that we're required by law to do that.

Either they have to do it or we have to do it.

Any other?

Good evening.

I'm Peter Kleeman.

I live at 407 Head Street in the city.

I notice on the map that's highlighted that this is apparently new right of way that's being asked for.

And there is a sewer that's in the ground there now.

I'm curious if there are

right of ways that are going to be returned to the city that will be no longer maintained by Rivanna Water and Sewer and what the opportunities are as part of this project that could enhance the park that would allow other plantings.

The existing sewer line has probably been maintained by allowing only limited growth on those areas so that digging can be done if necessary without removing large trees.

I think there's a palette of plant materials that are allowed to be used in those right-of-ways.

and so I'm also curious that if these things are going to be removing additional trees that are part of the memorandum of agreement for screening of the historic properties like Rock Hill Gardens, I'm just curious if there's any notation in any of your material that indicates what are the existing right-of-ways and how they relate to these, how they relate to loss of tree cover and whether these things have all been

Thank you, Mr. Kleeman.

We'll get some clarity on that in just a moment.

Anybody else in the public like to speak?

We will now close the public hearing.

We have included the impacts of the sewer relocation in the both memorandums of agreement, one which is now null and void but will still be honored by agreement with Department of Historic Resources and the other under the interchange.

I don't believe that the existing line is under a formal easement but is covered by a multi-party agreement that allows for its maintenance.

Okay, thank you.

Is there a second?

I'll second.

Alright, it's been moved and seconded.

It will carry forward to our next meeting.

Thank you, Ms. Tucker and Ms. Hildebrandt.

Next item on our agenda is a public hearing and ordinance relating to the grant of utility easement under Jefferson Park Avenue and West Main Street to the University of Virginia.

Before us tonight are the first two readings.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, I think if you've been up recently to the intersection of JPA and West Main, you've seen a lot of construction ongoing there.

We've received a request from the University of Virginia for a 40-year easement to underground utilities, electrical conduit and related facilities under JPA and West Main.

As noted in the agenda memo,

The two main objectives for this project was to improve pedestrian safety at that intersection by creating a bump out which reduces the walking distance across West Main and JPA and also to underground utilities along the south side of West Main Street.

We've included in your agenda materials an ordinance that is offered tonight for first reading and the standard deed that we use with the university for this type of easement.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Any questions for Mr. Brown before we open the public hearing?

We'll now open the public hearing.

There's nobody from the public who signed up to speak on this matter.

Is there anybody who would like to speak?

All right, we will close the public hearing.

All right, it's been moved and seconded too.

We'll carry forward to our next meeting.

Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Next item is a report and resolution regarding the Solid Waste Cost Share Agreement for the McIntyre Recycling Centers before us tonight on the first of one reading.

Thank you.

Mr. Mayor, Members of Council, during your budget deliberations we did discuss the continued participation on the part of the city with the Albemarle County in operating the McIntyre

Recycling Center.

If you may remember last December, Rivanna, in an attempt to hold down its costs did change some of the services and some of the hours of operation.

This has held down the costs dramatically and we now are able to come forward to you with an agreement.

This is a one-year

agreement and the Rivanna board made the decision that we would revisit it in January after six months of operation and so we may come back to you.

What we wanted to do was revisit it again before you went into your budget deliberations for next year.

I did make a mistake on the memo so I must tell you that the

Cost share is based on last year's citizen survey, not the one that we just finished last week.

Well, you made a liar out of me.

It was my mistake telling me it was me.

That's fine.

At this point I can only give you an estimate of what I think this is going to cost because if you remember how we've been working on the Rivanna

We have a budget but then it's kind of what really happens during the year and costs which is again why we want to revisit it at the end of six months.

The estimate at this point is that the city's share for this year would be $32,557 and based on the comments that you all made during your budget

Deliberations.

I think that's a reasonable amount to meet the desire that you all had to continue to provide the service to our citizens.

I have a couple just brief questions.

We addressed that, and there was not sufficient interest from our partner in doing it.

It's very expensive.

It is, I know.

It is very expensive.

But again, at the end of six months, we want to relook at this.

The fluorescent bulbs are the ones we have the problem with because they have to save those for the household hazardous waste days.

And I will admit my ignorance that before that, I was, as the spouse of someone who was the designated goer to the McIntire Recycling Center, I was unaware that we were now accepting other plastics.

Is that?

Yes.

It's in a separate bin, but they have been able to find a market for that.

I guess sort of piggybacking on Ms. Akus' comments and questions, I would like to see in advance of this six month review, sort of a menu, if you will, of items.

There are things that we have cut back on, like operating days, like certain services.

and I have said publicly that not only do I hope we can find a way to restore the level of service we had before but actually go beyond that and expand services available at the recycling center.

Not a problem.

Thank you.

It's been moved and seconded.

Any further discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

And it passes unanimously.

Thank you, Ms. Mueller.

Next item is a report, Dominion Virginia Power Systems Update.

I'm very pleased to note that we have with us tonight a good friend of ours from Dominion Virginia Power, Mr. Scott Reed.

I really appreciate you coming tonight and I apologize I haven't returned your call, Scott.

But I very much appreciate having Mr. Reed here tonight.

We asked Dominion Power to come and just speak about the state of our

our energy transmission system here locally.

We've had issues as well known regarding power outages.

That's not a good way to make friends among elected officials.

No, it's not.

Do you have a PowerPoint?

Wonderful.

Well, good evening, Mr. Mayor, City Council members, Mr. Jones, Mr. Brown.

I'll let you all find your seats.

But I want to thank you very much for inviting us here this evening to provide a system update for Dominion Virginia Power.

My name is, like the mayor said, Scott Reed.

I'm External Affairs Manager for Dominion.

I represent the company and the communities where we do business.

My region of our service territory stretches from Culpeper County

down to Nelson County and then Albemarle east through Goochland County and of course the city of Charlottesville as well.

We were asked to provide a brief update on Dominion Virginia Power's operations.

I'd like to spend several minutes on this and reserve the bulk of our conversation, however, for Rob to address some specific reliability issues in the area.

While both of us welcome any questions during the presentation, we'll gladly remain here at the podium to answer any questions you may have afterward as well.

I hope you will forgive the elementary nature of this graphic here, but I think sometimes it helps when we present to the public to go over some terms and concepts that we in the industry use.

You'll see in the top left, power generation station, that's where electricity is generated.

It's sent out onto the transmission lines at a very high voltage.

It is at this high voltage that is transmitted efficiently and inexpensively across the state and across the region.

You'll see there next the transmission to distribution substation.

It's at these substations that the very high voltage is stepped down to a much lower voltage that is transmitted across the distribution lines.

If you think of the transmission lines as an interstate highway system, the substation is like the exit ramp and the distribution lines are like our secondary roads.

Those distribution lines provide power to our homes and businesses.

You can see the boxes down there.

They're transformers.

and I think Rob will refer to all of this different equipment in some of his presentation.

Part of that system that we operate provides power of course to homes and businesses and as homes get larger and businesses consume more electricity we are obligated as a company to meet that demand and that presents some challenges for us in the industry.

In 1980 the average U.S. household

had three electronic products and today that number is 25.

I think that just sort of illustrates how demand continues to grow.

Just on July 22nd of the week before last on Friday when it was sweltering 102 degrees here in Charlottesville, Dominion set a new all-time record for power delivery.

Not necessarily generation but for electricity delivered to our 2.2 million customers.

Electrical demand in Dominion service area has been identified as the fastest growing in the 13 state mid-Atlantic region.

Having experienced 40% demand growth over the last 10 years, third party forecast project 4,500 additional megawatts of demand projected over the next 10 years.

We face this while all the while importing the second most highest level of energy behind every state other than California.

We do, however, have a strategy for addressing this increasing demand, and we call that Powering Virginia.

A strategy involves more than just additional generation capacity, though that is a very critical and necessary component.

More holistically, we are investing heavily in conservation, efficiency, system upgrades, transmission and distribution solutions, and smarting the grid.

On the generation side, just this past spring, we brought bare garden-powered generation

excuse me, Beargarden Power Station in Buckingham County to commercial operation.

It's been running ever since we brought it online non-stop.

The new generation station in Southwest Virginia is 90% complete and Warren County Power Station is state of the art gas-fired three-on-one combined cycle plant and Front Royal is undergoing regulatory review.

Additionally, we've announced plans to convert three coal stations and our service territory to biomass and announced plans to convert our Bremo coal station to gas.

Additionally, we have an exciting solar project announced in Halifax County.

I'd love to speak more if we had time.

Conservation and efficiency programs at Dominion have proven to be very effective.

Compact fluorescent light bulb rebates, heating and lighting retrofit programs, new electric vehicle and time of use rate schedules, home energy reports and new tools for evaluating electric consumption are but a few.

More are being developed and will undergo regulatory review soon, including expanded net metering and solar distributed generation capabilities.

In 2009, under the paramount marquee on the downtown mall here in Charlottesville with the mayor, Governor Kaine, our CEO, as well, Dominion launched Smart Grid Charlottesville.

Smart Grid Charlottesville is a bundling of many new efficiencies and features made possible by modernizing the electric grid.

Parts of Smart Grid Charlottesville include installation of LED street lamps on McIntyre Road, many of which you've probably seen, a solar demonstration project at the SPCA, home energy reports, partnering on the EcoMod and EcoRemod projects, and replacement of conventional meters with smart meters throughout the city and in Albemarle County.

Our customers are just beginning to realize some of the numerous benefits of deploying smart meters in Charlottesville.

Many of them are listed up here on the screen in front of you.

Smart meters allow remote real-time meter readings, avoiding monthly visits by our service trucks.

Voltage conservation, a technology made possible by smart meters, ensures we are making the most of every watt generated by more precisely delivering optimum voltage to the customers.

Our outage notification will enable us to better pinpoint exact trouble areas in the event of an outage, accelerating restoration times, while remote service connects are possible with smart meters.

And I'm proud of the fact that since activating this feature in April, we've eliminated 3,000 truck rolls for meter connects or disconnects.

And we expect this number to increase even more as students return to UVA this fall.

Additionally, real-time energy use data will enable dynamic or time of use pricing, improving customer choice and optimizing generation and demand cycles.

In addition to the savings, efficiencies, customer choice and environmental benefits, many features of smart meters have direct and indirect benefits to electric reliability in Charlottesville.

Thank you very much.

My name is Robert McIntyre.

I'm the reliability manager for the Northwest area.

I'll speak as eloquently as Scott.

I'd rather be crunching numbers somewhere, but I'll do my best to get through this.

I brought a bunch of subject matter experts with me, so if you do have any questions, please feel free.

We have folks from construction, planning, operations, forestry, and a performance engineer from our reliability group.

So I have

I think I got it all covered in.

Someone from media too, so we're ready for you.

Okay, reliability.

When we can name events by dates, it's never a good thing.

Lately we've had our share.

The biggest date for us usually is September 18, 2003, which was Hurricane Isabel, but now we've got December 19, 2009, which was a snowstorm

February 5th, another snowstorm in the microburst of last year, which we all I'm sure remember well.

And Mr. Huja, I guess I'll add July 20th to that as well.

When you add these events up and the frequent thunderstorms we have with traditional equipment failures and vehicle accidents, dig-ins, which is somebody may be digging along our underground lines and come in contact with them, it can

Reliability cannot meet our expectations very easily and very quickly.

This is a map of the number of storm days since 2010, since January 2010.

And what that means is after a major storm we may spend two or three days doing restoration on that storm.

So what this shows you is

Basically what we're trying to show here is Charlottesville lately has been a target for storms.

We have two on-staff meteorologists and we all become part-time meteorologists in our line of work.

And we watch the storms come down 64, they look like they're going to dissipate, and then they seem to accelerate and intensify and hit Charlottesville lately.

So this is reality, these are our challenges, what are we doing about it?

I think that's why we're here.

Part of sustainable reliability is our forestry department.

It's one of the most important parts.

And I think he's got one of the most difficult jobs we have.

has to keep us happy and keep the lights on and a lot of people are very protective over trees and we understand that.

The two don't mix very well, electricity and trees, but it's reality and it's life.

2010, including major storms, 38% of our tree outages were tree related.

Of that 38%, 60% were from out of the right of way.

And what that means is traditionally our right of ways are 30 feet wide, about 15 feet on either side of the line.

and then if you have a 60 foot tree that's 30 feet away from the line and it comes into contact with our line, it causes outages.

So what we do, we're very aggressive now in getting out ahead of our, Dale gets out ahead of the tree crews and not only are we looking at stuff in the right of way, we're outside the right of way looking in, trying to identify danger trees and we'll contact homeowners and try and take the tree down out of the danger zone or all the way to the ground.

We have 1,000 miles roughly of overhead facilities, so we are 3 to 350 miles annually, danger tree patrol removal, helicopter patrols, and integrated vegetation management.

All right, this is a very busy slide, and I apologize.

Well, we have a lot of stuff going on, and I don't want to leave anything out, but I don't want to try and overcrowd it, so I'll go through it as much as I can, and it's time a lot, so we'll try and get into the details a little bit so you can get a feel for what we're trying to do to achieve sustainable reliability.

It's a lot of hard work, it's a lot of data crunching, it's expertise, and it's investment by our company and in our facilities.

Let's see, I've got one of these pointers here.

I'll just start from the top left up here.

I know more by numbers our circuits than streets, but this is Preston Avenue here, I believe, and Barracks Road.

The folks in this area, five of the last seven outages have come from up here at our Barracks substation.

So it's been out of their zone of protection.

So what we're doing is installing an automated tie here

And we have the ability now with protective devices on the line to automatically restore, after 65 seconds, power back up to this area here.

So again, normal feed comes down, if you remember our road map explanation, comes down through here up Emmett Street and then down Barracks Road down to, right here is Washington Park, I believe.

So that's our automation scheme and it affects roughly about 1,700 customers can ultimately be positively affected after an incident.

It doesn't remove the number of events but it does help with the duration.

Frequency and duration are the keys to our success.

Another automation project we have.

This one should be completed late this year.

This one will be completed any week now.

We've been working on it for a couple months.

Again, it's the same type of project.

It's an automation we call a loop scheme project.

And for here, the tie is down here, and it'll back feed up to, actually it goes up this way, right up to here.

And that's, excuse me, I got it backwards, it's right up to here.

Anyway, another automation project.

So this page has four single tie automation projects, and then we have an additional map for what we call it

Second generation of automation project.

So this is the automation technology part.

Another thing we have going on is called circuit reconditioning.

And what this is is aimed at improving the storm resiliency of our circuits.

So our designers will go, for about 10 miles, they'll go pole to pole, start in Sherwood Sub, and they'll go up here along Harris Road, up Fifth Street, all the way to Main Street.

and what that is is they go looking at cross arms, insulators, increased arrestor protection for lightening protection and it's a total rebuild of our circuits and it's aimed at improving storm resiliency.

So we have two circuit reconditioning programs going on, the engineering is going on now with our designers and they will start construction in 2012.

We have a rebuild project, starts at our Charlottesville sub, comes at Locust Street,

and all the way down and we're converting a circuit down here all the way down Avon Street to the end.

It affects about 5,000 customers and we'll be adding 150 amps of ampacity to our circuit there and we'll be moving customers from a troubled area to a more dependable circuit.

All right, this is what I referred to in the previous slide.

It's called circuit reconditioning.

And again, it's a comprehensive program aimed at improving our storm resiliency.

And we have 20 miles in the city planned for 2012.

And that takes usually about two or three months within our engineering, our designers, to get all the permits, get the plans made, and then we'll start construction in 2012.

All right, this is something for, we have four feeders that this second generation distribution automation project encompasses.

And it's roughly 10,000 customers covered by 11 protective devices.

And what this scheme does is it takes four feeders, 11 devices, and it can isolate faults and restore service based upon our limitations.

It takes into effect other things that our other schemes don't, it takes into the,

Current loading conditions, some of our lines have more ampacity than others, and it'll shift load to help restore service.

So this is one of only two 100-hole systems.

It's a new technology that we're trying, and this will be in service this year as well.

Something we've been working on since late 2009 is when we put out the RFQ.

It's coming to fruition now.

All right, this is our current transmission structure.

It's a strong system, and we're gonna be making it stronger.

2013, we have plans for a new Brandywine substation coming into the backyard of our existing Charlottesville office.

We have not submitted the SUP for this, but we're working hard to make sure it meets the Planning Commission's expectations.

2014, we'll be rebuilding the 230 kV transmission line to Hollymeade.

Right now, that's a radial, just goes to Holly Mead.

When this is completed, it'll go up and back, forming a network and a loop in our system that's much more reliable, and this helps support the city of Charlottesville to the north.

This project will start in 2012 and hopefully be completed by 2014.

It's 45 miles long.

It's an upgrade of our 230 kV.

It's at 115.9 now, 115 kV is the voltage, and the plans are to upgrade it by 2017 to 230 kV.

All right, just in summation, our reliability investments.

Brandywine Sub, we can't talk enough about that.

It's kind of a reliability manager's, you know, dream come true to get a new substation right in the heart of our load center.

And, you know, it's four new circuits.

The amount of circuit ties that that brings in and automation possibilities and the ability to shorten the exposure zones and a much shorter circuit.

So it's a big part of reliability moving forward.

Strengthen our transmission line in Dooms or Brimos is 45 miles of rec and rebuilds.

It's a significant investment.

Distribution, Circuit Recon, it's a big program we've had great success with since late 2007.

20 miles scheduled for next year and we've been, let's see, roughly three to four miles a year is what we do as a company.

Reliability programs, that's our reliability, our automation projects, automating our ties, thermal scans.

That's something we've been active out here in the last couple weeks doing.

We've done at least 24 of the 27 circuits in the area we've done a thermal scan on.

And it helps us identify hot spots and be proactive in our maintenance.

Forestry, vegetation management, and of course smart grid and the distribution automation.

You have the presentation in front of you.

The last page, the questions page, has a couple of links down there.

I'll just bring your attention.

The first is our website.

Shameless self-promotion.

But the second is the Powering Virginia initiative I spoke to.

and that last one, it's a long one that it would be very painful to type into your computer.

But if you do that, or you don't even need to do that, just let me know.

This is a newsletter that I produce for my service territory here in Charlottesville and Albemarle and Culp that I circulate to accounting leaders and businesses and our nonprofit partners to just sort of let them know what's going on in the world of dominion.

So if any of you are interested in that periodic newsletter, please do let me know.

And we'd be happy to answer any questions or certainly attempt to.

Thank you very much.

It was a very informative presentation.

One of the things you talked about about the trees that you know people are passionate about having trees and yet sometimes you have to cut down trees to keep power because we also want electricity and I know that JPA notwithstanding we're not probably going to get underground utilities this year but one question I had as you were talking about danger trees of

You know, like a 60-foot tree near a line outside of its easement.

What makes a tree a danger tree?

Yeah, a lot of droughts can cause

So it's not just the fact that it's a tree?

To talk to the homeowner and see what arrangement can be made.

Yeah, I would love that.

We work closely with Tim Hughes at the city parks for Charlottesville.

Our circuit system, we have 28 circuits in our Charlottesville district.

These circuits are maintained on a three-year rotational cycle.

So we look at trees, we evaluate trees, we evaluate trees that potentially could conflict with our overhead infrastructure.

There's a lot of things that could cause, to answer your question,

Good example is some of the work up on the Georgetown Road right now where there's some sidewalk.

There's an extensive root system there and there's some disturbance going on with the root system.

So that's something that may not show up immediately, but down the road very much could.

Insects, disease, drought, there's a lot of variables that can cause you to be one thousand.

Do you have a ballpark for the number?

Is that an unreasonable question?

I don't know what's your time to time but the mortality can be somewhat greater but in the city of Charlottesville itself I don't see us taking a lot of danger trees down.

Another question I had was just kind of using your crystal ball and sort of, we have, we're piloting a project I believe here that has to do with plugging in electric cars for quick powering up and presumably we'll have more and more electric cars going forward.

That's a great question.

It's one we get a lot.

We have a new group within Dominion that we started maybe two years ago called the Alternative Energy Solutions Group that was formed.

It's at the executive level, reports directly to our CEO that looks at business opportunities that are cutting edge progressive new technologies.

And they have really run with this EV study.

I hope I don't quote the wrong statistics, but I believe that they envision there being 50,000 EV

and electric vehicles in Virginia in the next two years, by 2020.

Thank you.

And of course we installed some charging stations at the new Kent rest stop and so we're very involved with that.

It's actually been given to another manager to handle this project and so we're embracing it, we're enabling the pending onslaught of electric vehicles and I think we're well positioned to account for that.

We have a new EV, I've mentioned the time of use rate schedules in here.

There are.

There's a whole host of them.

We have a lot of resources on our website at DOM.com.

You can search for energy conservation.

We have a blog.

We send out tweets several times a day on what customers can do to conserve energy.

I know the Richmond Times-Dispatch, I don't think the Daily Progress is running, but we have a tip of the day on things that customers can do to save energy, whether it's CFLs or closing your blinds at night or getting a programmable thermostat.

There's more information than you'd care to go through on our website.

and I'd encourage you to look at that.

And of course there are other resources as well outside of Dominion.

EPA has a lot of resources on their site.

LEAP, the local program here, has a lot of great, great programs.

I have two or three comments for you.

First of all, I want to acknowledge that I'm one of your stockholders, but I'm glad that you guys are doing that.

I am pleased because you're doing preventive measures in the city at least, which is helping long run.

The question which I had was, you mentioned that there's a pricing in time of day pricing.

I'm sorry to keep referring to our website, but we do have information there about that and I'll be happy to see you afterward and get you any information on that.

I mean, if you're interested personally, I can certainly do that.

If you're wondering how we're promoting that... Yeah, that's what I'm asking.

Yeah, you know, I would have to speak to our energy conservation.

Of all the experts we have here, we did not bring an energy conservation expert, and it's my fault.

I apologize for that.

But I think that they...

I mean, they put out all sorts of literature on the different programs that they offer, and I suspect that that may be one.

I've been living here for 38 years.

In the last five years, we have had more incidents of losing electricity for a longer time.

I handle the easy ones.

You know, 2009, I look at history, that's all I do is look at it as history.

2009 was a good year for us.

2010 and 2011 seemed to be just the

Fierceness of the weather seems to be, it seems more intense and we've talked to a lot of people, we had a meeting this morning with some other customers that felt the same way and it's just, it seems to me it's more of the intensity of the storms than the system failing.

Two more questions will come.

One relates to the tree.

In my previous job, when I worked as a director of planning for the city, I used to have a lot of battles with you guys about how you trim your trees.

You've become a lot better now.

I want to compliment your tree people.

Previously they used to come and just top them off.

Now they are more thoughtful.

I hope you will stay thoughtful like that.

Well, Dale Crutchfield deserves a lot of the credit for that and he'd probably be too modest to say that we were just awarded the National Arbor Day Foundation TreeLine USA designation for our tree trimming practices and urban tree steward practices.

I hope I got that right, Dale.

And I think that's a coveted designation shared by only one other company in Virginia.

Third, last question.

It does indeed work.

That's a complicated subject.

I'd be happy to talk you further offline or afterward, but we have a program that's quite popular in Charlottesville anyway called net metering, where you generate power and it works to offset your consumption.

And to your question,

If you generate more than you use in any given month, that credit will roll forward to the following month.

And that will happen on an ongoing basis.

After some finite amount of time, we would want to enter into some power purchase agreement.

But I will say, thanks to Delegate Tiscana, there was a bill approved through the last General Assembly that will allow some more robust net metering options for customers, including solar distributed generation.

Recently I've heard from people who use solar panels that there is no incentive to use it anymore because you're not willing to buy enough of it, enough of a surplus.

Well, there is.

Currently, under Dominion policy and state statute, the net metering systems are limited to 10kW.

I don't know if there's any limitation on how many kilowatt hours would be credited.

I don't think that there is.

But by virtue of the fact that a 10kW system can only generate but so many kilowatt hours, I don't think that would be an issue.

Just a question.

I'm not a stockholder, but I do have four children, so I think I do make pretty good investments.

So you're certainly a stakeholder.

Yes, I am.

And the concern that I have is that it's such an inconvenience, and it's hard to know who to address the frustration.

Absolutely.

I don't know if you're familiar with a relatively new tool that we make available online on DOM.com.

If you search power outage, you can pull up an interactive outage map.

and of course if you haven't managed my account but that requires signing up and registering which we encourage everybody to do but anybody can access the interactive power outage map which is just similar to a Google map and you can zoom down and see where outages are and with those as soon as possible after we know that there is an outage we will try and issue an ETR, an estimated time of restoration

so that you can plan accordingly.

And we try very hard to hit those ETRs.

We're not always perfect.

Sometimes we give a range of what those estimated restoration times are, but that is the highest priority of our offices to let you plan accordingly based on what those outage durations will be.

Yeah, that's my point.

Your internet router doesn't work?

Exactly.

Exactly.

And of course our 800 number, or 866-DOM-HELP, we encourage everybody to call when their power goes out and they can call for an automated restoration time announcement if they click through the prompts there as well.

So hopefully your phone will work now.

I think we've learned that communications during an outage is as important as getting the lights on.

It really isn't.

When we're getting the lights on, communicating that to our customers and meeting that commitment is just as important as getting the lights on.

And, you know, as a company, our numbers are going down the right way, our outage numbers.

Now, Charlottesville is a challenge for us right now, and I think

We have a good plan going forward.

Now, time will tell and we'll be back.

In undergrounding?

Yes.

We don't have any large-scale undergrounding projects going on.

We have what we call strategic undergroundings where we will, based on adage history, we'll look at areas and undergrounding may be the best option.

Our existing right-of-ways do not permit us to put facilities underground, so we have to acquire new easements, new right-of-ways, so it's not a simple procedure.

The reason why I'm asking is because there are possibilities.

The city takes initiative in undergrounding.

When I was working in the city, we did undergrounding on Court Square.

Yes is the answer and we'd be happy to work with you all and Judy and whomever else to have those discussions because I think you're right it's going to require a partnership.

A similar partnership idea.

I was going to run by you all and see if you have any sort of program.

We have several buildings in the area that have largely low-income people who have various disabilities, use wheelchairs, can't do stairs.

When their power goes out and the elevator doesn't work, they're trapped.

And recently we've had some of these where it's either been really hot or really cold and people don't really have a way to easily get out.

and one of the things that a couple of folks are looking at is the possibility of installing generators for the elevators.

I'll certainly look into that when we get back to you but on your customers with

Special requirements or medical needs.

We do keep a database and we encourage those customers to let us know about that.

And there's a process described on our website on how to go about letting us know about a medical need that requires a power outage.

And then we have special notifications when those customers are without power.

Any other questions or comments?

I want to thank you for your responsiveness tonight and to our community in general.

I know it's difficult work and you're on the firing line when outages do occur, so I appreciate the attention you're paying to this very important issue.

I also want to commend you because I've been involved with the LEAP program since its inception, the Local Energy Alliance program.

Frankly, Dominion really has no financial incentive to be supportive of a program that's going to reduce demand for your services.

If you were truly interested only in the bottom line, the last thing you would do is support an initiative that's going to

make people buy less of your product.

Thank you, Mr. Mayor.

We'll make this a brief report on the Council's recent retreat, which he held on June 9th, to review the priorities that Council established in 2008 and to evaluate where we are in addressing those priorities.

In all, there were seven priority areas that Council

initiated in 2008 and we reviewed, including alternatives to cars, infrastructure repair, race relations, economic development, workforce development, affordable housing, and making Charlottesville a greener city.

During the last three years we've had a number of accomplishments associated with those priorities and I think the list is pretty extensive.

I wouldn't want to go through all of that tonight but I will touch on some of the bigger issues.

We have increased our commitment to affordable housing through the Affordable Housing Fund and the approval and construction

of the SRO.

We've increased our funding for workforce development opportunities such as our apprentice program for the downtown mall project, our job fairs and the expansion of the summer youth internship program.

We've increased our commitment to improving the aging infrastructure of our city.

We've continued to provide a high level support to our public schools.

We've launched the dialogue on race to bring people together to address race relations in our community.

We are working to enhance our tree canopy.

and we're working to make Charlottesville a more pedestrian and bicycle friendly community.

And all of that is a result of hard work of our staff, the city council, and of course our community because we do collaborate on a lot of these projects.

As Mr. Huja mentioned, we have added, during the retreat we added another priority area

and to make it eight priority areas, and that's the area of children.

Kind of a broad subject, but a lot of issues under that subject, including reducing the infant mortality rate, focusing on prenatal care and other strategies, early childhood education, support of children learning outside of school, outside of school hours, expanding community activities for children and youth.

We spent quite a bit of time talking about that.

supporting efforts to close the achievement gap in our community, improving overall health outcomes for children and support for healthy families in general, not just focusing on the children, but the families at large.

And, you know, as we know, the city is not alone in trying to address these issues, and we can't address these issues on our own.

We have to partner with folks in the community, our residents, our nonprofit organizations to address these issues.

and I think this council and the city government is certainly committed to doing that in a number of different ways.

Thank you, Mr. Jones.

I would like to say that I was the new person at the retreat this year, and I was interested to see that last year's council did consider children as a priority area and had talked quite a lot about it, and I recognize that and appreciate that.

And I think one of the things that went into the conversation this year was a statistic which has startled me, and I repeat often, so if you've heard it, just kind of write it down of the things that Kristin says all the time.

is the fact that children, by the time they turn 18, have spent less than 20% of their waking time in school.

And so we're not trying to duplicate what the schools are doing.

We're not trying to squeeze into their kind of purview.

This is really, for the 80% of children's waking time, and presumably the 100% of their sleeping time, that they are not in school when they're out in our community, in their homes, on the street, in programs, in our community.

Well said, thank you.

I have a question for Mr. Jones.

In this listing for this year, I don't see the votes of the council like we did in previous year.

The votes for the council?

Yes.

You mean on the?

On the issues.

Like it has on the old one.

On the issues.

Oh.

Like we had on the old one.

We do have that.

That would be useful to have.

Sure.

Not by name, but just by numbers.

We have it listed for the priorities in 2008, but we did not do that for this year.

Just to add one comment to Mr. Szakos' comments.

And I hope that one initiative that

that was started when I came on council was to address the infant mortality rate by providing educational opportunities.

And the first one was about creating opportunities for community outreach and the importance of case management and really meeting people where they are in providing education and encouraging women to get to those doctor's appointments.

We provided a forum on the importance of safe sleep and there was also an opportunity to get education about cribs that were available and it kind of modeled a program in Baltimore.

Last year the program was about substance abuse and its impact on the outcome of pregnancies.

and in this fall there will be another forum addressing the impact of obesity and the outcomes of pregnancy related to that.

I have nothing to add.

I'd like to make one suggestion.

I don't know if we need to act on it this evening, but just as something to think about.

One of the things that I was looking at for the new priority of children is the possibility of establishing a small task force for the city to sort of look at what we're doing, how things in various departments feed into that so we can sort of track some of the outcomes.

At one time we used to have a child care task force

many years back.

One structure that I would like to see in that would be a city manager, school board member, city councilor, and a staff member, or maybe a couple of staff people.

Can I add something else that we talked about at the retreat, which isn't part of this report necessarily, but we did have a discussion about changes in the vision statement, and I'd like to know when we can bring those suggestions forward.

Great, thank you very much.

Next item on our agenda is a report commercial property update from Mr. Chris Engel from our Office of Economic Development.

Thank you Mr. Mayor, Members of Council.

I want to take a few minutes just to give you a quick update on one of the ongoing initiatives that the Office of Economic Development is involved in and in the process hopefully share a little bit of good news with respect to one of our key economic indicators.

Just as a bit of background, this initiative started back in 2008.

We were hearing some concern from folks about a growing number of

vacant storefronts, particularly downtown.

And one of our initial responses to that was to say, okay, let's get some data and see if this is a perception issue or if this is actually an actual issue that's occurring.

And in a smaller community like Charlottesville, there's no existing data source for something like

retail vacancies.

As we quickly found, larger cities tend to have a commercial brokerage company that will produce a document on a regular basis.

So there was no existing ready data source in Charlottesville, so we undertook a fairly modest initiative to collect data twice annually, in January and July of each year.

And we started in July of 2008 to collect data on the number of vacant storefronts

downtown.

We started downtown.

We since expanded in 2009 to include four additional retail areas throughout the city.

So our current survey covers the downtown area, the corner, Seminole Square, Barracks Road, and Preston Plaza on Preston Avenue, in all about 400 storefronts.

So we've been conducting them now for

a little over three and a half years.

We've now completed our seventh edition, if you will.

So we're starting to amass enough data to be able to look at a trend and identify those trends at the very least.

So real quickly, the most recent survey, which was completed earlier in July, has some good results.

Our overall rate throughout the city dropped from 5.7% in January to 3.5% vacancy.

in July, which is a pretty good drop, a little over two and a half, two percentage points.

And for a bit of perspective, the national average currently for vacancy in retail is 7.1%, so we're considerably lower than the national average.

The mall area itself, if you were just to pull that out, as we started to do initially with the survey, it dropped from 7.3 to 4.7%.

So the overall rate dropped, the mall rate dropped.

Every area that we looked at of the five that I mentioned saw a decrease in vacancies over the most recent six month period.

So all good indicators from our perspective.

With respect to the overall trend, as I mentioned, we've been doing this over a three and a half year period.

We hit a high point in July of 2009 where our vacancy rate reached about 9% in the Mall area, a little over 9%.

So that was our high point, of course, over just a small period of time that we've been measuring it, but that has progressively, since that high point in July of 2009, has gone down to what we're seeing today in the 3 and 4% ranges.

Also the trend over that period, even when we hit the high point,

was that Charlottesville stays below the national average with respect to these type of figures.

We provided a report that includes a narrative description, pictures, a couple of graphs for you to look at.

Before I conclude, I do want to thank our intern this summer, Neil Henry, who spent a fair amount of time and gathered this actual data for the report that you're looking at for the July date.

Well it's difficult to say precisely but I think that you know overall it's interesting I compared these numbers earlier today with our unemployment rate and they tracked fairly consistently once again over three and a half year period as these vacancy rates go up our unemployment went up and vice versa so you know

You can't say that an occupied storefront means that 10 people have jobs.

It might just be one person.

But nonetheless, I think it indicates that Charlottesville is a conducive place to do business.

Folks want to do business here.

And even in difficult times, our rate stays below the national average.

So I like to think that we're an area where folks are continuing to want to do business.

And maybe you could just, for the benefit of the public, I mean obviously even though things seem to be moving in the right direction and our businesses are, as you say,

generally doing better than the national average.

But there's still business owners who are struggling.

And maybe you can talk briefly about the kinds of services and assistance that's available to a small business owner.

I know we support the Small Business Development Center.

You yourself and your team go out and provide support.

Sure.

We do, as you mentioned, partner with the Small Business Development Center, and they provide free one-on-one counseling for anybody who's interested, whether they're a startup or an existing business.

And actually, quite frankly, over the period of the last couple of years, we've seen quite a few existing businesses be desirous of that type of assistance, given the hard times.

Our office, my colleague Holly Lee and I spend a lot of time, specifically Holly spends a lot of time one on one with small businesses and folks that just have an idea and want to move that idea forward.

So we start that process even before they are quote unquote ready for a storefront.

But you're right in saying that there are still a lot of businesses that overall are seeing difficult times.

So this is an indicator, but it's not.

Other comments or questions for Mr.

It's great that we're tracking this because it really helps a lot to kind of get a sense of whether things are working.

You're right.

Okay, thank you very much.

Okay, last item on our business agenda tonight is a report on funding priorities for non-profit agencies, steering committee and staff recommendations.

And joining us again tonight, Gretchen Ellis with the Commission on Children and Families.

Thank you.

Good evening everybody.

We met with you a little bit less than a month ago to present the recommendations from the priorities report and you gave me a challenge and asked me to respond to the comments you made in a little bit over an hour of conversation.

So I went back and watched it twice and I hope I got all of the questions and concerns that you guys brought up.

If not, please let me know.

So you have a report in front of you.

I'll go over very quickly the responses and recommendations and then

We'll take any questions you might have.

You asked us to reinstate recommendation number one regarding a needs assessment.

And so we have put that recommendation back in with a proposal to bring you a plan by October 4th, October 1st, excuse me.

about how this might be done and what the cost would be.

As I told you, I think at the last meeting, the Board of Supervisors said that they would be interested in hearing such a proposal.

They did not make the same commitment that you guys made last month.

The second recommendation is that you might want to set aside some of your funds for some priority areas and the recommendation is that if you do that we issue an RFP and go through the same process that is being done for all the other agency budget review team agencies.

You asked us to provide recommendations to solicit feedback from stakeholders.

First of all, we will build such a recommendation into

the needs assessment proposal we bring you.

And secondly, the funding application that I sent to you includes information from the agencies and programs about how they elicit participant involvement in both governance and planning.

You indicated that you would like an outside organization to evaluate programs and I think we need more guidance from you about what you're talking about with that and what kind of budget you're looking at.

Fourthly, you asked us to look at other communities.

My capacity is fairly limited at this point.

I have an intern who can do that work for me, but realistically with the budget review process in the fall, we probably can't get that report to you until next summer, or at least late spring.

You talked about increased data sharing and

There are a couple of projects that the Commission and some other organizations have been involved in, both in terms of looking at individual child data sharing as well as creating a platform where we can look at overall progress towards a variety of indicators.

The first part of that project,

Looking at individual child sharing data is something that we're looking at with the early childhood programs as a pilot.

There are a number of products out there that we're investigating at this point.

We're working with Smart Beginnings leadership team and the Partnership for Children to look at piloting that within the next six to eight months.

We're also, we are in the process of gathering data on the indicators that were presented to you in the report and are looking at platforms to report that data out.

You asked us for clarification on the recommendation regarding arts and cultural programs and festivals being included in the agency budget review team process.

That recommendation was based on the strong support from the people on, from the festival community on the steering committee and staff continues to endorse that recommendation with a specialized sub-team with people with expertise in that area.

You asked us for copies of the proposed application and evaluation process, and that's included in this report.

And then finally, Albemarle County Board of Supervisors asked us to look at some comparable communities, and I included my memo to them regarding the comparable communities in this report.

Leading to arts and cultural programs,

My recollection was that we said that we wanted to not keep it as part of your review.

That's my recollection.

I did not hear a consensus in my review of that meeting.

Yeah, I think in your original presentation you gave us what I felt were compelling reasons to keep it in.

And I think the fact that both the kind of staff report but also the arts organizations themselves and the people who make these decisions about funding all feel that that's an appropriate use.

Well, I'm just disappointed that the festivals and art and cultures are included in this process, especially I think about how now Green County's just struggling, whether or not they're even going to have a fair next year, and the county doesn't have a fair this year.

So I think, I was thinking that our festivals are events that make Charlottesville a destination, not so much as a human service.

And as I think we mentioned before, the rest of the steering committee was in agreement with you Ms. Edwards and you Mr. Huja in recommending that it not be part of the process.

And it was the four people from the festivals who made a very strong argument that it be kept in.

I think fearing that they might be marginalized if they had a separate pot of money, that it might be something that could be cut

quickly.

I was part of the subcommittee dealing with the arts and culture and that was one of their main concerns was that they would be marginalized they would be pushed off to the side and while the other human service agencies would continue to see the pot grow their pot will remain stagnant or even decrease if they were not included as part of the main process.

As a compromise with the arts and culture individuals, we did decide to take the arts and culture applications and have them go through the regular application process, be part of the main pool, but be separated out and reviewed by a specialized group such as members from the chamber, members from the visitor's bureau, and other

My concern is that, not a concern, we have been really generous in supporting arts and cultural programs as your data shows that we are not in the bottom frame.

It is basically because

I don't want to take credit for this process.

City Council has a great deal to do with that in terms of what we have supported over the years.

And so I think the way that artists lose out, I think they've gained more than they've lost in working through this process.

I think one of the factors driving the push from the festivals during while we were convened in this committee

was that the County Executive's office was being asked by the board and I guess some members of the public about what items are discretionary in the county budget.

And County Executive Foley was quoted in the Daily Progress as saying,

This is what makes our community a great community, all the cultural and art activities.

I think we value a great deal, at least I know in the city we do.

I would say as staff and non-profit directors, everyone was headed in the direction that you and Vice Mayor Edwards were, or are.

This recommendation went to both the city and county and I would point out to you on the, I want to say the second page of the memo that I sent to the Board of Supervisors.

It shows per capita spending for arts and cultural and Charlotte's first per capita spending is $7.44 near the top.

Albemarle's is 78 cents.

I noticed that.

It shows you a lot of priorities.

I guess another question I have is for a lot of the festivals being able to demonstrate the impact of in-kind donations is still important because there's some things that we can offer that really don't necessarily have a dollar value but still make a difference in the outcome.

One of the things that the new process looks at is the economic impact of programming.

So some of the festivals can demonstrate pretty significant economic impact.

Art will lose out if it was part of the city county process because you're looking at priorities of both the bodies, not just one.

And there are groups in arts who can't quantify easily their benefits to the community, but there are a tremendous amount of benefits, at least in my mind.

Maybe this is one recommendation that we should hold off on deciding until we have a full council, because I respect our advocates for the arts.

I know Mr. Huja's been working in this area for years.

The applications will be released before you meet again.

But I think that would still lead, they will not be due until mid-October.

The application would probably be the same.

Yeah, you told us at the last meeting that it was essentially the same.

Yeah, essentially identical.

My preference, I'm one of four here tonight, but my preference would be not to change the process midway.

I was willing to try this new system.

My concern was that it not get lumped in with all of the other non-profit applications and so I appreciated the fact that you're creating a separate review committee and actually have people, you know, reviewing these applications who have direct experience in these kinds of events.

I guess, and if we move forward with what's recommended now, as uncomfortable as I feel, what I would ask is that the staff would be vigilant during this entire process and to

Give a good report of what the outcomes are so that if next year this time it didn't work, give it a chance to be reevaluated.

Because I'm just, I'm leery of the idea and I don't want to put the festival planners, who are largely volunteers, in a place where they're not able to have good choices next year this time.

And one of the things we do after the applications are received is we survey all the organizations and ask them for feedback about the process.

We always make separate recommendations for funding for the city and county.

So is there at least a majority supporting council for trying this out for a year and then we can re-evaluate?

and I think Ms. Edwards made a great point about just making sure the staff remain vigilant about how this proceeds.

I actually had a separate issue regarding item number three on your memo regarding feedback from stakeholders and beneficiaries.

I appreciate the two recommendations here.

I think they're good solid recommendations.

But I would like to request a third one because a lot of

I think a lot of what you were hearing from us last time had to do with input from stakeholders as to the funding allocations and really what this gets at is

input on the needs assessment, input on the individual programs and how they're involving stakeholders, but we have nothing here in terms of, you know, what kind of input are we getting or seeking from stakeholders on the funding allocations.

And I'd like to request that you consider a third bullet which would involve maybe a focus group of low-income or stakeholders, let's just say stakeholders,

We'd be delighted to have stakeholders serve on the agency budget review team.

and the time frame, the time involved in terms of meetings is less, the time involved in terms of work is probably the same and I've tried over the years to recruit people.

Well, this might open the door to that.

Yes.

To see if there's a way to connect that with also the community service that some public housing residents are required to complete that they can be invited to be a part of this process and actually get credit.

That would be great.

Any help you can give me in recruiting, I would be very happy to take.

Any other comments, questions?

All right.

Do we need a motion?

I don't believe you took any action at the last meeting.

Is there a motion to accept the report as amended tonight?

So moved.

Any discussion?

Hearing none, please indicate your vote.

That carries unanimously.

Thank you very much.

That was the last item of regular business on our agenda tonight.

Is there any other business?

Mr. Jones, anybody?

We will now open our meeting to one last round of matters by the public.

Is there anybody from the public who would like to speak?

Yes, Rebecca Quinn, 104 Fourth Street here in the city.

I want to thank you, Mr. Mayor, Mr. Jones, for the report on population, for the demand analysis.

If I understood Mr. Jones, he said that AECOM will report on population before the next public meeting on September 13th.

I'm not entirely comforted by that.

September 13th, as I understand the announcement, is not another public meeting or on an interim report,

It is a joint public hearing on the regional water supply plan, the whole thing.

And I think that means that the whole thing, or whatever they're holding the hearing on, must be made available to the public several weeks before September 13th or late August, which means that the demand analysis must be finished even sooner, sometime within the next couple of weeks, I believe.

And of course, you don't have another meeting in August.

So it seems appropriate, I think, to ask Rivanna to reschedule this public hearing so you can get a report on population before they finalize the analysis.

September 13th, timing is a bit of a puzzle anyway.

You may recall that the regional water plan is due to be submitted November 2nd.

So a fair amount of time, I think, in there to push things back.

Another comment on population.

We understand the Virginia Employment Commission is contracting with Weldon Cooper to do demographic work.

We have asked Rivanna to have AECOM at least consult with Weldon Cooper and we hope you will support that request.

Remember, you use population projections in several plans.

And I think it means, you know, if this ends up being a good population projection, it's something you could be using in

in multiple plans, so you need to see it before it is used in any final product.

I also want to let you know that AECOM was very open in its process and invited comments and this office hour approach, which I really liked, and we did submit written comments, detailed written comments and questions on the demand analysis.

It's only been a little over a week and a half, I think, but one question we asked both at

office hours and in writing, they indicated they would respond to us, which we have not yet seen.